Tag: Fainting

Slice of Life: Turbulence

Posted on by Sierra

*For my usual readers, you may notice “SOL” placed in some of my blog titles over the semester. This means that they are a “slice of life,” an assignment given my writing class to, make the seemingly mundane moments of life take on a life of their own. It shouldn’t be terribly different from my regular blog posts, so I invite all to read. However, I must warn you about the contents of this specific entry.
Are you ready for this particular slice of life, dear readers?
Here are the quick stats of the last 24 hours:
Hours Slept: Total? You mean, combining all of those little mini-sleeps caught here and there on the way to the bathroom? About 3 composite hours of sleep.
Times I (attempt to quaintly say) Rid My Stomach’s Contents: We lost count after 10.
Hours Spent in the Hospital: 3 1/2
Needles That Went Into My Body: 3, and several to look forward to tomorrow
Times I Cried Like a Little Wussy Girl: Like, 7.
In short, I’ve been throwing myself a right pity party for the last 24 hours because I have had the stomach bug that Lucifer, himself, concocted in his special misery pot, and sent up straight from Hades, just for me.
            And yet, while I have made plenty of time to feel miserable, this nasty experience has also produced one of the most tender moments of my life. It was around 4:00 AM. My stomach was finally starting to settle down, and after hours of escorting me back and forth to my couch (I got too weak to walk around 1:00), after hours of back rubs, and holding my hair back, and grabbing things at my every need, after hours, sleepless hours, I asked Jeremy to go to bed—he had 9:00 AM class. And as I finally felt myself drifting off to sleep, a thankful pull into oblivion from Heaven above, I expected Jeremy to go and do the same. I wantedhim to do the same. But as I opened my eyes in my final moments of consciousness, Jeremy was there. And when I woke up a half an hour later, Jeremy was still there, my ever-vigilant watch dog. He sat in a stiff chair while I took over the couch. I could only make out the dark outline of his body, his exhausted, sleep-deprived body, but I could tell he wasn’t asleep. He was checking on me. Above everything else, he gave me his worry, and honestly, sometimes that’s a nice present. He couldn’t have served me any more, and yet somehow he found a way. He was my knight in shining armor all night, and then some more all day.
Marriage is good like that. Even when you feel like you are in the depths of hell, you can fall in love all over again. I hope everyone marries a husband like mine. 

My Personal Fear Factor

Posted on by Sierra

For some people, it’s public banisters and door handles. For others, it’s the ice at restaurants, and after having worked at a restaurant for three years, I can affirm that you probably ought to be disgusted by what swims in there. But not me! I’m not scared of toilet seats or bottoms of purses or even snotty-nosed toddlers. I’ve never really been a antibacterial-toting germ phobe (well, I guess except for a brief spell during the Swine flu epidemic). But there is one thing that sends the “sick nasties” dancing through my bloodstream:

Yes. Loofahs.
 Don’t be trusting of their strange, colored innocence. These puppies are germ factories. Germ Central. Bacteria Absorbents! 

 Oh my gosh, they gross me out so much. Something about the softness of my skin post shower suggests that they’ve been scrubbing off all my dead skin cells, and I’m not entirely trusting that those skin cells made it down the drain.

In my world, Bath Time is Supreme and the Loofah is King. I replace the Loofah regularly. I rinse and wash it meticulously. At one point, I even had two loofahs so as not to cross-contaminate their purposes (Don’t think too much about this).

So when Jeremy off-handedly mentioned that he borrowed my loofah recently, I can’t say that my reaction was as Suave (shower joke) as I would have hoped. It went something like this:
Jeremy: Hey Sierra, I borrowed your loofah, I hope you don’t mind.
Sierra: (Visibly losing all color in my face) You… I’m sorry… you…. what?
Jeremy: I used your loofah.
Sierra: (Reaching for something I could lower myself onto to keep from passing out) But… honey, why did you do that?
Jeremy: Cause you bought me that body wash, and… I’m sorry? Was that a problem?
Sierra: No! No… Um… Just-just…just… NEVER DO IT AGAIN!!! 
(At this point I went on a rampage, pouring Jeremy’s shower gel down the drain and laughing maniacally while I did it. Clearly, a switch had flipped.) *

This is why I will be stopping by the drug store today to locate a loofah for Jeremy. He expressed preference in a manly loofah, so I hope I can find a black one with skulls all over it. But it’s worth whatever great length I have to go to, because Jeremy’s shower gel is expensive and smells really good, so I would hate to see another bottle down the drain.
*-Story may have been embellished. The fear is real.


Jeremy Fainted! He FAINTED!

Posted on by Sierra

I collect idiosyncrasies; which is to say that I’m kind of an odd duck. One such idiosyncrasy is my peculiar affinity for having blood drawn. Since I was tested for mono in the 9th grade (test positive, thank you very much), I realized that once the needle was in, it felt kind of like a little sucker-fish sucking on a teeny hole in my arm—and for some crazy reason, I kinda liked it.

An unfortunate Robinson reality: I have yet to break the 110-pound limit required of blood donors, so I’ve never gotten to wear one of those nifty criss-crossy colored bandage thingies that you get, along with complimentary juice, that one receives after they donate. Thus, I persuaded two of my most trusted BYU acquaintances, Miss Chloe Noelle (who you’ve met before) and Sir Jeremy Penrod Esquire, to donate their red humor in my stead.

Chloe. Was. Nervous. 

Jeremy was obnoxiously nonchalant.

Jeremy, after finishing the question and answer session, which sounds more akin to a PPI, was escorted to the donation chair, where they juiced his arm up with iodine and inserted an impressive needle. I played the role of the dutiful girlfriend-type-thing, and gasped and grimaced in all the right places. Jeremy charmed the male nurses, all the while maintaining a positive demeanor, and cheering Chloe on as she made her begrudging death march to her own donation chair.

Chloe. Was. Still. Nervous. She declined my invitation to hold her hand, and opted for Jeremy’s masculine (albeit a tad clammy) hand instead. The nurse was appropriately sarcastic with Chloe as me, Jess (another cheerleader), and Jeremy gathered around her and watched her squeeze the blood out of her arms. Chloe expressed her concern, not about the pinch of the needle, but of the lurking fear that she would pass out after the deed was done. Jeremy made wise cracks about the impossibility of the whole affair.

And then, he mentioned that he perhaps ought to get something to eat.

And then he turned paler than Edward Cullen.

And then I thought he was merely trying to psyche my woe-begotten friend out by falling, face-first, almost in slow motion, on top of her as the blood drained from her arm.

“Jeremy!” I said harshly. “That’s not funny! Stop faking it.”

Jess was quicker on the uptake. She realized that my boyfriend-type-thing was indeed fainting—genuinely. There was a slight panic as the nurses eased Jeremy’s pale, momentarily lifeless, and excessively limp body to the floor.



Chloe got up and got juice like it was nobody’s business.